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(11) | EP 4 289 348 A3 |
| (12) | EUROPEAN PATENT APPLICATION |
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| (54) | SPACE DIVISION MULTIPLEXING OPTICAL COHERENCE TOMOGRAPHY USING AN INTEGRATED PHOTONIC DEVICE |
| (57) Integrated photonic chips and related systems and methods suitable for space-division
multiplexing optical coherence tomography scanning are disclosed. In one embodiment,
the photonic chip comprises a substrate, an optical input port which receives an incident
sampling beam from an external light source, a plurality of optical output ports configured
to transmit a plurality of sampling beams from the chip to a sample to capture scanned
images of the sample, and a plurality of interconnected and branched waveguide channels
formed in the substrate. Waveguide channels in a splitter region divide the sampling
beam into the plurality of sampling beams at the output ports. Terminal portions of
the waveguide channels in a time delay region associated with each output port have
different predetermined lengths to create an optical time delay between the sampling
beams. In some embodiments, the chip further comprises an interferometer region to
create interference patterns.
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